November 19’s Connections served up 16 words that split into four clean groups of four. Today’s mix leaned on short fruit/food names, famous surnames, lexical endings that hide smaller location words, and a playful “funny” cluster—below you’ll find hints followed by the full answers.

NYT Connections Puzzle Overview: November 19, 2025

Today’s puzzle is tidy and clever — four neat groups that reward both sight and a little literary knowledge. Two sets are simple synonym clusters, one leans on classic Poe titles, and the last is a sly little letter-add trick (organ + one letter). Start with the obvious, trust your instincts, and enjoy the satisfying click when everything lines up.

NYT Connections Hints: November 19, 2025

Category 1:
  • A word you’d use for someone solidly built — think compact and strong.
  • Short, punchy, and often used about a heavyset frame.
  • Describes a body that’s thick in a sturdy, almost squat way.
  • A single-syllable adjective that rhymes with “slick” but means the opposite lightness.
Category 2:
  • A verb meaning to show the way or move someone toward a goal.
  • Short and confident — tell someone which way to go.
  • A word meaning to lead a group or guide its motion.
  • An old-fashioned term for guiding, sometimes used about pastoral work.
Category 3:
  • A wine barrel — you’ll find this in a tale of a walled fate.
  • The word that begins the title about a crumbling house and cursed lineage.
  • A masked revel — the title that pairs with a deadly, red visitor.
  • A low, deep hole — paired in a title with a pendulum and terror.
Category 4:
  • Add a single letter to a digestive organ and you get a community.
  • Add one letter to the body’s hearth and you get a warming fixture.
  • Add one letter to a respiratory organ and you form an action or a word meaning to lunge.
  • Add one letter to the outer covering organ and you get a little scaly critter.

NYT Connections Answers: November 19, 2025

Here are the answers, grouped by category.

Category 1:
Category 2:
Category 3:
Category 4:

Conclusion & Quick Strategy Tip

Theme: Today pairs concrete vocabulary and classic literature with a neat morphological trick. Two groups are pure meaning (stocky, steer), one rewards literary familiarity (Poe), and the last is a one-letter twist that’s a delightful “aha.”

Solve flow: Lock in the synonym sets first — they’re visual and immediate. If Poe isn’t your jam, scan the list for any word that screams a Poe title; often spotting one will reveal the rest. Save the organ + letter set for last — once you see one (like colon → colony), the pattern unfolds.